What cow-loving India should actually focus on: Making more fodder available to starving cattle

Many passion is now generated in our material world of animal protection. However, a fascinating account of the reality of the fodder situation for them seems to have largely been lost.

There are 108 million adult bovine females in a bovine population of 200 million dollars, according to the National Dairy Development Council.

In addition, there are about 100 million buffaloes in the country. In addition to animal feeding privileged with conscious milk producers, they feed all herbs growing in common fields (forests, public lands around roads, railways and canals, grasslands and open village areas in general) and residues of crops .

A very small minority has the opportunity to feed on specially cultivated forage. Nearly 200 million small ruminants also feed on the same food resources. Gradually, as pressure builds on common lands, the situation facing free grazing of livestock has become darker by the day.

In a profound article written in the 1980s, economist Tushaar Shah had identified the four stages of animal evolution. The first step is an abundant drop in property and public crop residue combined with a low mechanization of agriculture and underdeveloped dairy markets.

In this situation, the need for oxen is the main driver. Little by little, as the mechanization of agriculture and dairy markets develop, the need for oxen and reduces the incentive to maintain increases in buffalo and livestock population decreases, while the number of buffaloes increases.

When the deceleration of agricultural waste and common goods disappears, a better agricultural practice is integrated quickly, increasing the proportion of productive animals in the total population.

Finally, it is suggested that indigenous cattle and buffalo are beginning to be replaced by a collection of mestizos gained a more rigorous administration to optimize the use of available raw material. As the level of mechanization of farms, access to dairy markets dynamic and abundance of common property varies considerably in different parts of the country, the composition of livestock and population per hectare of land also vary.

The great center of the Indian influence zone bordering the west by Bhil lands, north of the Chambal river basin, and to the east by the Chota Nagpur plateau are traditionally dominated by cattle.

Throughout traveling and committing rural areas you will have many opportunities to see large herds of emaciated cows traveling. I traveled as though maybe a few hundred times and have always been affected by the sight of poor but many malnourished cows that Hindus wake up. As a leading Indian economist, we do not like to kill our mothers cows, it is the fact that we starve to death.

Last year, traveling from Bhopal to Betul in Madhya Pradesh on National Road 49, I found hundreds of cows abandoned in the stressed Ratapani forests. Further research revealed that they were dhanihin (or ownerless) or orphans because farmers prefer to get heaps of trucks and leave them to their fate in these jungles.